A modern society is served by utilities that must function properly at almost all times. Proper functioning is typically expressed by reliability, availability, accountability, and certifiability, the latter term meaning the ability of a user of a utility to actively query and learn the status of the utility. In order to meet the growing demands while providing reliability and efficiency, utilities, such as electric utilities, are developing and implementing technologies to create an intelligent infrastructure, such as a “smart grid” infrastructure of the power grid.
In order to realize an intelligent infrastructure, there must be an embedded or overlaid communications architecture by which components in the network structure can be accessed and controlled. Unfortunately, there is much ongoing, and indeed increasing, malicious cyber activity directed to harming the utility infrastructure. Trojan horses, viruses, and computer worms, for example, are often deployed and improved in order to disrupt the utility metering functions and other communications in the utility network.
In order to limit the potential damage of the cyber security threat, efforts are underway to enable awareness of potential threat events as well as their details and effects in order to harden the utility communication infrastructure both proactively and in response to incidents.
For these and other reasons, there is a need for the present invention.